Facebook today announced in a blog post that it’s ramping up security, and adding a few very neat features to keep users safe. The first feature is a completely HTTPS-enabled browsing option (not including 3^rd apps yet) which will be rolled out within the next few weeks, slightly overshooting the Firesheep buzz. Other features include remote log-out and one-time passwords.

“However, if we detect suspicious activity on your account, like if you logged in from California in the morning and then from Australia a few hours later, we may ask you to verify your identity so we can be sure your account hasn’t been compromised.”

In turn, the verification requires a user to match a picture of their friend to his or her name. These new features do appear to be helpful, but they were announced mainly to ease the coinciding launch of a new ad unit named Sponsored Stories. Sponsored Stories copy likes, comments and location check-ins users’ friends post on their wall which mention a sponsored brand (whether positive or negative), add the friend’s profile picture and display that unedited quote as advertising. Sponsored Stories are similar to the Beacon Ads program Facebook launched a couple years ago, which were removed shortly after their launch, due to massive user criticism.

Nonetheless, while Beacon Ads have been removed, Sponsored Stories aren’t likely to follow suit. The latter will probably cause a lot of backlash to Facebook from privacy advocates, but as a part of a gradual site modification aimed to simplify user activity monetization, the new ad units are not likely to go away anytime soon. In related context, eMarketer found 78% of users think privacy settings are keeping them safe, so Facebook is certainly on the right path with the recent security updates.